Light It Up Springfield

So Christmas is my favorite holiday/time of the year (in case you didn’t already know). I’m affectionately known in my family as a Griswold because I tend to get a little carried away with the Christmas lights….maybe a little more than Clark….if you could believe anyone gets more carried away than Clark.

But of course, today is November 21st and we’re still more than a month away from Christmas. Heck, Thanksgiving is still two days away. So when is it too early to turn on your Christmas Lights?

Here in America, for many, it’s a faux pas to turn on your lights prior to Thanksgiving. And in some cases, people won’t even turn their lights on until well into December. (a few exceptions for people who won’t turn them on until Christmas Eve) But that’s real life, and everyone can find a justification for waiting (or not waiting) to turn on their lights.

But what about in our Pocket-Sized Springfields? What’s ok and what’s not ok when it comes to turning on your lights? Is it perfectly acceptable to turn on your lights before Thanksgiving? Heck is it perfectly acceptable to turn your lights on in October? Or are you like Wookiee and just never turn them off?

If you’ve been playing TSTO for as long as I have, 5 years, this will be your 6th Christmas in Springfield. In that time, if you’re like me, you’ve accumulated a LOT of Christmas decorations and LIGHTS! And hopefully, that handy light plunger to toggle them on and off easily…

Side Bar….who remembers having to go around town and turn on each set of lights individually? Those were the days, huh?

So when do you turn them on? Do you wait for December 1st? For Thanksgiving to be over? Or Snow on the Ground? (because let’s face it…nothing looks as good as Springfield covered in snow with Christmas lights on)

Or are you like me and already have your lights on in town? I turned the lights in my pocket-sized Springfield on over a week ago. Why?

Because who doesn’t love to see the festive lights all over town?

The Candy Cane Cooling Towers looking so dapper in red and white…

Or the Wiggum house with the Santa falling over….Ralphie must’ve decorated…

The VanHouten’s with their Funzos swaying in the cool air…

The Mansion of Solid Gold…how Lampwick’s house has that little extra twinkle from the Christmas lights…

How cute the Purple House looks with Santa and his Reindeer up on the roof…

How Classic and simple the First Church of Springfield Looks decked out in Angels and baby Jesus…

Don’t mind how Mr. Costington is too big to fit through the doors…

How Sanjay’s House and Apu’s Apartment both look so simple, yet so elegant with their garland windows and few lights..

Only appropriate the Helen Lovejoy would be passing by…to judge.

Can’t help but love the Santa hat touch on Frink’s Lab…and even Willie’s got his shack decked out..

Town Hall has it’s tree up already too…

Even Candy Kevin can’t help but take a stroll through the lights…

And of course, who doesn’t love watching Homer and Flanders duke it out for the tackiest Christmas house on the block?!

Springfield is AWESOME for the holidays! Of course it’s always better with snow So why not turn your lights on early and get into the holiday spirit?

I guarentee no one will groan at you for it, like they will if you put your Christmas tree up this early.

This time of the year can get stressful for many. There’s always one more present to buy, one more gift to wrap, one more card to send, one more trip to the grocery store…always one more. But in our Pocket-Sized Springfields, stress isn’t supposed to get us. It’s supposed to be a stress-free zone.

So turn on your lights and enjoy them! Enjoy scrolling around town looking at the details of each decorated house. And enjoy it before the next event hits. Because soon the snow will be falling, the snowpeople will refreeze and then it’ll be too chaotic to enjoy the details! And let’s all hope that EA doesn’t screw it all up this year!

When will you be turning your lights on? Feel free to share some of your holiday designs in the comments below.

I love this post! Thanks for sharing the pretty pictures, Alissa. I can’t remember a time when I played during a Christmas event, so I have no lights. I don’t think I’ve ever seen snow in Simpsons town ever! Actually, I’m glad I started taking TSTO a little more seriously this year. Because I’ve done more this year to participate in events, I have more stuff my Simpsons town. It’ll be a treat to get my first set of Xmas Simpsons stuff this year, I really hope we all have a great event!

I only started in winter ’15 so Homer and Flanders house and the church have festive skins not yet “deployed” but no other lights earned yet – pagans didn’t help much there.
I do have my tree out at my town hall though, and might break out the new year lightball thingy and some ice/snow figures as soon as EA gives us snow.

My Springfield is all decked out for Christmas, and I can’t wait for the snow to hit. Not so eager in real life – I’ve been shovelling snow regularly (read ~5 times a week) since Hallowe’en. Our tree and decorations will go up on the first day of Advent (this year that’s Dec 3). They’ll stay up through Epiphany. Easy dates for the kids to remember and cuts through the pleading/arguments with regards to timing.

You have my sympathies….I would be perfectly happy if it never snowed more than an inch again here! (But, since “here” is Massachusetts, there’s zero chance of that, even with global warming, at least in my lifetime, I think.) Where do you live? (And remind me not to move there, lol!)

Posting this reply to Becca again and hoping it ends up in the right spot this time…

You have my sympathies….I would be perfectly happy if it never snowed more than an inch again here! (But, since “here” is Massachusetts, there’s zero chance of that, even with global warming, at least in my lifetime, I think.) Where do you live? (And remind me not to move there, lol!)

Hi, Sandra
I live in Alberta, Canada. Let’s call it 1.5-2 Montanas north of Montana. The great joke about the weather here is if you don’t like it, wait 5 min ’cause it’ll be different. We also say we have 2 seasons: winter and road construction. Overall the temp this year has been quite nice, but I suppose it’s all relative. Anything warmer than -20C (maybe 0F?) is good this time of year. But it’s dry so wind is more bothersome than temp around here. Some years we have barely any snow, others snow mountains fill half the parking lots. Sometimes it doesn’t snow until January and other years we have snow Sept-May. And then we’ll have a Chinook in the middle of it all and experience a +20C (~70F) day in the middle of winter, melting snow everywhere only to freeze it later and give us ice all over the roads. It’s pretty unpredictable. This year we’ve had just enough snow to shovel, slow and steady since Hallow’en. Makes me appreciate the nice clean lines of the roads in the game once the Christmas update hits 🙂

A lot of your weather (and the saying about “wait 5 minutes”) sounds like here, although we do actually get a summer, which has been getting progressively nastier (warmer and definitely more humid…blech!) over the past several years. This year we seem to have skipped my favorite weather (fall) for the most part and have gone straight from summer to winter (and back to summer, then back to winter a few times). I think we may have had singe gashes in the air, but, thankfully, in my town, nothing significant on the ground yet.

By the way, forgot to mention that my company has an office in Lethbridge…are you near there? Sounds like you may be closer to Calgary, though, since I think Lethbridge is closer to Montana than you described.

Lethbridge and Calgary are quite a bit closer to the border than I am – I’m in the Edmonton area, about 500km (just over 300m) north of Lethbridge. I think Minnesota has very similar weather, just knock ~5-8F off your temp at any given time. A bit bit less sun and a lot less humidity. As for snowfall, it can come and go through Sept and Oct, but the snow we have on Hallowe’en is always here to stay.

This friday the x-mas market starts in my town (real life town) with ice rink etc and LOT of lights. But it’s still over 10°C, so no real x-mas feeling yet.
In my springfield i’ve put on the lights today

I started just before last Christmas. My friend who has been playing for years and got me hooked on the game, promised me there would be all kinds of Christmas decorations and surprises. Well we all know how that turned out. So I don’t have any Xmas lights. 😢 Sure hope we get 💡💡💡 this year.

Great post.
I’m 100% against the “Christmas Creep” so I staunchly stand by no Xmas decorations until Thanksgiving is over. But lighting up before we get snow in our Springfields will be fun…
(…after the pumpkin pie is served, of course)

I have all my unused event items stored in a walled off junkyard area adjacent to the recycling factories. It’s always out accumulating cash and xp, and easy to relocate the relevant holiday items I want.

I get the misspellings, but saying it wrong? How do you mispronounce Alissa?? A long i? That would be weird (Especially since there’s a double consonant after it)!

About 75% or more of the non-local phone reps pronounce my town, Natick, with a short a, which makes no sense, since it’s followed by a single consonant and then a vowel….makes me wonder how/whether they were taught phonetics in school….

As for mangling one’s name, as my grandfather used to say, “Call me anything but late to supper!” 😉

I’m waiting until post thanksgiving in game but the tree has been up in our house since last week. IRL people get super picky about putting up the tree and lights “too early” but I say to each their own. If I’ve got to put up all of the decorations I may as well enjoy them for a couple months

Having the music and decorations come out before December even starts burns me out. I walked into a store playing carols on November 2nd, and I walked right back out again. Stores probably hope it will put people in a “shopping mood,” but I just don’t want to deal with that.

In Springfield, my Santa’s workshop and stuff are out all year, but that is mostly because I don’t want to dig them out of inventory for a couple months, painstakingly decorate and lay it all out, and then store it again. (I’m the same with Halloween stuff.) It’s mostly on the north end of my town, in my mini-golf course, or in my factory sector. However, I don’t hit the light plunger until the event hits, or is at least imminent.

I hit my plunger the day after Halloween to lessen the blow of the lack luster event being 13 days P.A.S.T!!!!! The actual day.

IRL I try to put up lights after actual thanksgiving. I really hate the retail encroachment of Xmas on everything. I saw Xmas stuff in September this year. ITS not Black Friday anymore it’s black half day Thursday……..

I put all my Springfield lights awhile ago. In real life I always put the tree up on the first of December. There is also nothing better then having or cooking a roast on a 40c day, which is common down here in the Sth hemisphere. Christmas has always been my fav holiday but since my son is now old enough to be super excited it’s better.